Seminar at Sea: One

All at once, I have quite a bit to write about! I got home last night from a very different kind of adventure. Joe was off on his own adventure and when he planned it, I decided I would do my own thing. But not alone: my sister was able and willing to join me!

So, two Sundays ago, Bonnie and I flew to Fort Lauderdale where we boarded MS Zuiderdam for a ten-day Caribbean cruise. We were part of a group of nearly 100 participating in a Quilt Seminar At Sea.

Zuiderdam hold nearly 2000 passengers, ten times more than I'm used to on a cruise with Star Clippers. We got lost a lot trying to find our way around the ship!

Our first port of call was Half Moon Cay, and I must say that we were pretty unimpressed. Many passengers opted to take excursions that involved riding horses, jeeping about, or cruising on a glass-bottom boat. We just went ashore and wandered about.

Half Moon Cay is a small island owned by Holland America. Everything there was an opportunity to line the company's pockets. We purchased no drinks and no food. We looked at the T-shirts and passed. The beach was pretty enough (see photo above), but we weren't on the island very long before we were ready to get on the tender to return to Zuiderdam.

Bonnie and I had both chosen to take all three of our quilting classes with the same instructor. This turned out to be a good decision, and there will be a lot more about that in future posts.

After a little welcome party with the group's organizers, we had the opportunity to sign up for a seminar to familiarize us with our sewing machines. Another good decision. As a Bernina aficionado, I'd never used a Janome machine at all, much less a product like a 9450 QCP. It didn't take long at all for me to become smitten. Our classes were in a room fully outfitted with these machines; an adjacent room held the brand new machines, the M7s, which were used by those working on machine quilting. The curator of these machines was a man named Scott who was just fabulous. At the intro seminar we made these little pouches to hold a rotary cutter.

One of the perks of being a participant in the seminar was a complimentary dinner at each of the two premium (read: additional cost) restaurants aboard the ship. That night Bonnie and I dined at Pinnacle and it was delicious and elegant.